Ceisteanna ar Pholasaí nó ar Reachtaíocht - Questions on Policy or Legislation
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-17
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Richard Boyd Barrett (PBP), Dún Laoghaire

With huge numbers of households struggling with the hikes in electricity and energy costs, how does the Government think it is okay for ordinary working people and householders to pay twice as much per unit of electricity as the billionaires who own the data centres in this country? Now that it is clear it is not going to do so, how can the Government honestly justify not supporting imposing a levy on those billionaire owners of the data centres so that we can give a serious break, €500, to every household to help them with their energy bills and to all those with disability, yet oppose that and defend the status quo ? Is that not the reason people will be marching again this weekend on the Affordable Ireland demonstration in advance of the budget, because the Government is protecting the interests of the billionaire owners of data centres that are hoovering up our electricity while ordinary working families are being hammered with increased energy and electricity bills?

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Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-09-17/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:48+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-17